All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine FROM THE PUBLISHER
Hartha Graham said that watching George Balanchine choreograph a ballet was like "watching light pass through a prism. The music passes through him, and in the same natural yet marvelous way that a prism refracts light, he refracts music into dance." Twenty years after his death, the ruthless, enigmatic founder of New York City Ballet still dominates the world of dance. He worked with Serge Diaghilev-and Sam Goldwyn. He made ballets to the music of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky-and to "The Stars and Stripes Forever." A Russian emigre who fell hopelessly in love with American culture, his four marriages and countless affairs (all of them with beautiful young ballerinas) became tabloid fodder. Though he turned ballet into a truly modern art, his plotless, seemingly abstract dances were as romantic as the genius who made them. "Put a man and a girl on the stage and there is already a story," Balanchine said. "A man and two girls, there's already a plot." In clear, elegant prose, Terry Teachout tells the dramatic story of the greatest choreographer of the twentieth century-and explains why his ballets will be even more significant in the century to come.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
"Balanchine was every bit as important as... Matisse," says literary critic Teachout (The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken), who writes for the viewer who doesn't know a pass from a pas de chat, but has, like Teachout, been "amazed" by one of Balanchine's works. His book is pithy, conversational and vivid, touching on all the major points of Balanchine's life. When a journalist asked Balanchine about his life, he replied, "It's all in the programs." But there was more to it, for his choreography is inexorably bound with the ballerinas he loved. He married four (Tamara Geva, Vera Zorina, Maria Tallchief and Tanaquil Le Clerqc), and lived with a fifth (Alexandra Danilova). In later years, he also pursued other dancers, most notably Allegra Kent and Suzanne Farrell. "Woman is the goddess, the poetess, the muse," he said. His company, trained in his fast, energetic, lean style, was the perfect vehicle for his works-among those discussed by Teachout are the elegant and jazzy Concerto Barocco, the acidic, spare Agon and the mysterious Serenade. Balanchine's ballets are modern masterpieces, and Teachout, moving chronologically from work to work, uses them as stepping stones to tell Balanchine's own story. This is highly recommended as a first book on the life and art of George Balanchine for students and the general reader. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Agent, Writers' Representatives. (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
The centenary of Balanchine's birth is being celebrated in a year-long tribute by the New York City Ballet and all-Balanchine programs by dozens of dance companies. Teachout, cultural critic for the Wall Street Journal, has written a volume as sleek and elegant as the dancers in a Balanchine ballet. Intended as an introduction rather than a full-scale biography, this book goes right to the essence of the Balanchine aesthetic, offering artful observations and insightful commentaries on several of the master's pivotal works, e.g., Concerto Barocco, Serenade, and Apollo. Teachout's recollection of a first viewing of Concerto Barocco is representative: "This was no dumb show, no mere pantomime, but sound made visible, written in the air like fireworks glittering in the night sky." His brief appreciation is accompanied by a critically annotated list of books. Dance and performing arts collections will surely want to acquire it, as will general collections serving patrons about to attend their first performance of a Balanchine ballet.-Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago P.L. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Polymath critic Teachout (The Skeptic, 2002, etc.) cogently introduces general readers and dance neophytes to the choreographer who reinvented ballet for the 20th century. Yes, it's a biography: the author takes us from the birth of Georgi Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg in 1904 through George Balanchine's death in 1983, when he was revered as the presiding genius of the New York City Ballet, nurturer of countless brilliant ballerinas (many of whom he loved and married), and creator of a brilliant variety of dances that brought ballet into the forefront of modern culture. Teachout notes that the trauma of separating from his family during the Russian Revolution may well have led to Balanchine's inability to form lasting relationships, both personally and professionally, as seen by his using and discarding Tamara Geva, Vera Zorina, Maria Tallchief, Tannaquil Le Clercq, and Suzanne Farrell, among others. But what really interests the writer is the choreographer's relationship with Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Wolfgang Mozart, his deep understanding of music, and his ability to make choreography that "instead of concocting redundant visual equivalents of the rhythmic surface of a symphony or concerto . . . plunged into its inner structure" in ballets that defined the art form for his age, including Apollo, Concerto Barocco, The Prodigal Son, The Four Temperaments, Stars and Stripes, and, of course, perennial crowd-pleaser The Nutcracker. Teachout covers everything from early work with the Ballets Russes in Paris through aimless years on Broadway-which Balanchine loved, as he did every aspect of American popular culture-to fulfillment upon the opening of NYCB in 1948. The writing isgraceful, with a judicious use of primary sources, and Teachout movingly conveys his love for Balanchine's art in a short text that makes no pretense to be the last word but fulfills its author's intention that it serve as a layperson's introduction. The perfect first book to read about Balanchine, and intelligent enough to have value for more knowledgeable admirers as well. Agency: Writers' Representatives
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